The molten rivers of Mustafar snake through its crust, their crimson veins casting a restless glow across the spire of Fortress Vader. Once a mausoleum to a Sith lord's fury, the citadel stands reborn.
Three survivors, Vicrul, Zeht, and a wounded Knight, had knelt in the cinder-streaked courtyard, their blood staining the stone as they pledged to become the Knights of Revan. Now, eight warriors move within its walls, swelled by five more drawn from the galaxy's fringes, lured by whispers of a legend's return or the promise of purpose.
The fortress bears the marks of its rebirth, no longer a relic of Darth Vader's rage but a forward operating base bristling with defiance. Its cracked spire gleams with lights torn from a gutted First Order shuttle, the craft's skeletal frame hunched by the gates, its innards scavenged to fuel survival. Rubble has been cleared from the inner sanctum, replaced by crude fortifications, warped durasteel plates bolted over breaches, their edges glowing from the magma's heat, and sensor arrays perched atop the highest tower, their rhythmic sweeps scanning for threats. The lava moat churns below, its deep roar a constant heartbeat beneath the stone, a natural barrier shimmering with heat waves, blurring the line between ruin and renewal.
Revan stands at its edge, his mask a stark silhouette against the glow, its red and silver scars catching the light as his robes billow in the scalding wind. His meditation deepens, a stillness amid the chaos, as he senses the threads of fate converging on this fiery world.
Vicrul spars with Zeht, the Zabrak's vibro-axes flashing against the warlord's evolved vibro-scythe, sparks raining onto the stone as their roars ring out. A Twi'lek knight, her twin blades a blur, drives a mercenary back, his rifle stock splintering under her assault, sweat beading on his face. Two cloaked figures linger apart, hands hovering near weapons, their silence heavy with anticipation as they study Revan's masked form. His presence has reignited their purpose where Kylo Ren's faltered.
Beyond Mustafar's orbit, the Rogue Shadow breaches the atmosphere, its battered hull shuddering as it descends. A week's journey from Corellia has left it limping, sparks flaring in the cockpit where Galen Marek wrestles the controls. He stumbles to his feet, sabers clattering at his hips, and peers through the cracked viewport as the fortress looms.
Revan turns, sensing the disturbance, and strides toward Vader's old quarters.
A low grating hum fills the command center, a grind sawing from the broken Empire consoles, their screens stuttering with static that scrapes at my eyes, sharp as a Cerberus hack tearing through the Normandy's firewalls. I lean over one, its durasteel edge biting into my palms, the cold sting grounding me as I sync my wrist interface, its orange glow flaring while I wrestle data from the stubborn wreckage of circuits. Nine days of this. Nine days on this lava-choked rock, and the screens spit back nothing but silence, a dead channel that mocks me harder than a Reaper's horn over a burning colony. Beyond the viewport, Mustafar's crimson murk churns, rivers of magma twisting the light into shapes that move like husks in a London alley, a quiet menace that tightens my gut with every passing hour. My neck aches where I muscled a turret into line earlier in the courtyard, the tech on my wrist guiding its barrel into a reliable arc, a lifeline I can trust amidst this Force magic circus.
Days of sweat and grit have turned this ruin into something I can call a stronghold, a forward operating base I've carved out with N7 precision. Revan's crew has grown, a pack of blade-swingers drilling in the courtyard below. Tech is my edge, though. I learned that lesson in blood against Collector swarms on Horizon and Cerberus kill-teams on the Citadel, where a combat drone's burst or a biotic detonation flipped the odds when everything else went sideways. My Predator sits on the console, grip worn smooth from years of service, a casual weight within reach, while the Wraith stays racked downstairs.
Nine days in and my eezo nodes still can't find their frequency. The charge gathers behind my sternum, the familiar buildup the implant has given me since it first woke, the mass effect field wanting to form, and then Mustafar's saturated currents shove back and the whole thing collapses before it leaves my skin. I've adapted where I can. Learned to use short bursts instead of sustained fields, a flicker of pull to yank a tool across the room, a half-second barrier that buys me one hit's worth of protection before it gutters. Enough to stay useful. Not enough to trust in a fight. The thought still sits heavy. On any world in my galaxy, I'm a biotic who can charge through a firing line and come out swinging. Here, I'm a soldier whose second heartbeat keeps skipping.
My time with Revan had cracked open this galaxy just enough to keep me steady, but it was the soldier's weight between us that had forged something real, a bond I had not seen coming, growing stronger with every shared scrape and late-watch conversation.
I had tagged his lightsabers "glowsticks" on day one, tossing it his way as we split a ration pack, a jab meant to cut through the mysticism that felt so foreign to a man who had grown up being shuffled from one Alliance ship to the next. He didn't blink.
Day three, he had watched me calibrate a turret, the orange glow of my tech throwing light across the stone, his focus a quiet hunger, cataloguing a new variable for his tactical library.
By day four, patching a durasteel plate over a breach in the east wall, he had asked about N7. Not the way a civilian asks, impressed and ignorant. The way a fellow commander asks, wanting to know the cost. I had told him about ICT at Vila Militar in Rio, the wash-out rate, the final evaluation where they drop you on a hostile world with nothing and see if you come back. He had listened with the full stillness he brings to everything, someone who had clearly done his own version of it an age ago.
"Finest warriors of your kind."
The weight in his voice told me he meant the gauntlet to get there, not the title.
Spectre had come up on day six, atop a spire as we calibrated a sensor, its rhythm thin against the planet's roar.
"An unseen hand."
The precision had startled me. The Council's shadow game, the authority to operate outside the law, the missions that never made the news. He had nailed it in three words.
Day seven, I had told him about the Reapers in detail. Not only the tactical data. Everything. Galaxy-eating machines that had invaded my mind, invaded my dreams with visions of red beams and burning worlds, Palaven's sky on fire and Earth's cities collapsing and the screams that still found me in the quiet hours. He had been still for a long time. Then.
His Mandalorian Wars, his fall, his redemption. My Reapers, my death, my resurrection. Different galaxies, same crucible.
"Figures. We're both suckers for lost causes."
I had muttered it with the ration crumbling in my fist, and his nod had sealed something between us that went past partnership into the territory of two commanders who had looked annihilation in the face and chosen to keep fighting anyway.
I had poked at his mask one evening, leaning against a spire while the Knights drilled below.
"So, is that a painted target on our back or a beacon for this army you're putting together?"
Half-joking, half-probing, because the thing drew attention like a Spectre's badge in the wrong room.
"Both."
He led the way a general leads who has played every hand the galaxy can deal, while I patched this fortress the way a grunt patches a forward base.
Against Revan's crew, sparring was always a coin flip. The mass effect field threw off their Force techniques, gave me a split-second window where their Force would stutter against the eezo interference. But they could counter with mental pressure that landed with the cold, invasive weight of a Reaper mind probe.
His Knights hung on his every word, all eight, their eyes carrying a devotion that set my teeth on edge. Too much belief, not enough questioning. I had seen that look on Cerberus troopers, on batarian fanatics, on husks that had been people once. Devotion without doubt was a weapon pointed at whoever stood closest when the cause shifted. The original three held tight. Vicrul's sneer had sharpened into focused command, barking orders with the rough edge of a man rebuilding himself around a new oath. Zeht's ferocity had found a channel.
I tap the console, pulling scans of Mustafar's atmosphere, the red glow swelling thicker each day.
"Give me something."
The wrist interface sparks under the words, orange straining as circuits glitch out before I can grab anything solid. No wrecks, no signatures, no comm chatter. Just silence.
The door hisses, and Vicrul strides in, boots scuffing stone, armor scratched from drills, sweat gleaming, his bearing steadier than the man who had knelt in the courtyard nine days ago.
"Shepard."
His voice is honed by Exegol's ruin, eyes sharp.
"Scouts are back. Nothing out there."
I glare up from the console, static dancing in my vision.
"Nothing?"
Every N7 instinct claws for a lead.
He holds my stare, resolve unbent.
"No."
Certain as bedrock.
I lean back, arms crossed, tension pulling my shoulders into the same set Omega's streets pulled them to, every blind corner already holding a gun.
"Revan's gut and a hunch again. We're short on guns, men, everything, and I'm chasing ghosts with a scanner that only works half the time."
"Tell him we need ships, firepower, not just hope. This place won't hold if what we are gets put to the test."
He nods sharp, boots ringing as he leaves, his grit a flare I can't deny.
Crazy bastards, but they've kept this ruin standing, a resilience I had seen in my own crew holding the line against Reaper forces on Tuchanka.
I grab my Predator, its weight steadying me as it snaps to my armor. I need some air. These screens are a cage, their glare closing in like a combat drop, into an LZ I already know is hot. I step to the viewport, glass cool against my forehead, magma glowing red below, its restless churn a rhythm matching my own heartbeat, the planet's murk pressing on the fortress with the same weight Sovereign's shadow laid over the Citadel.
My breath fogs the glass.
Traffic control pings. A ship drops from hyperspace, the screen lights up with an old IFF, the ship now breaching the atmosphere, engines coughing as it banks with combat-honed skill toward the east bay. It skids across the pad with a screech, smoke trailing, but holds steady. A gutsy landing that screams defiance and desperation in equal measure.
"Looks like we've got guests."
I'm already moving. The Knights will already be there, blades twitching, and before I can hit the comm, Vicrul's voice cuts through static.
"Ship's crashed, old bay. Checking it."
"Hold 'em there."
Voice sharp as a Normandy battle order.
"I'm coming down. No fights 'til I see who's dumb enough to drop in unannounced."
I cut the comm and jog for the lift, its drop lurching my gut as black stone and red light blur past. That ship feels like trouble, Revan's kind of chaos magnet, and I'll be damned if I miss it. The lift hits bottom and the courtyard surges, Knights peeling east, vibroblades glinting, their pack instinct sharp, preparing for whatever steps off that wreck.
"Master, I believe we're experiencing what aerospace engineers call 'catastrophic structural failure.'"
PROXY braces against the co-pilot's seat as sparks shower his chassis. One optic flickers. The other tracks the molten rivers swelling in the viewport.
"Also, you're listing fourteen degrees to port."
"Shut it."
I shove the stick and the Rogue Shadow groans, engines rasping a sound that vibrates through the deck plates and up through the soles of my boots into the old fracture in my left shin that Vader put there when I was eleven.
"Stay with me."
The words scrape between my teeth, aimed at the ship, at the engines, at whatever stubborn thread keeps this wreck in the air instead of spread across a lava field. The hull bucks. Something in the aft section shears loose with a shriek of tortured metal and PROXY's head swivels toward the sound with mechanical calm.
"We're doomed, Master."
The smirk pulls at the dried blood cracking along my temple.
Mustafar looms, its spire a claw piercing the sky, and I feel it, a pulse, dark and deep, rolling through the Force, pulling me back, a nexus of agony where I was forged. Home once, a boy torn from Kashyyyk, broken in that black stone hell under Vader's fist.
Now it calls out with Revan's mark, something I can't ignore. The descent slams me, turbulence rattling my teeth as I bank hard, engines wheezing but clinging to life, each jolt a memory of battles fought in this ship's hold. Juno's calm voice guiding me, Sera's giggles as she'd "helped" PROXY patch a panel. PROXY braces, silent, a skeletal shadow in the firelight, a quiet anchor through all of it. The landing bay swells into view with rusted gantries and cracked stone. The Rogue Shadow hits, skidding with a screech that splits my skull, metal grinding stone as smoke curls from the hull, coming to rest with a groan matching my ragged exhale, a sound heavy with years of torment.
I slump back, chest heaving, the liquor's haze swirling with the sulfur stink seeping through the cracks, dragging me back to a childhood of pain. Vader's mechanical rasp, Juno's fading whisper, Sera's cry cut short, the Jedi I'd hunted in these halls, their echoes a chorus of shame.
"Not dead yet."
The slur kicks the bottle aside with a dull clink as I haul myself up, my coat dragging heavy with Corellia's grime and blood, its weight a reminder of the Pyke brawl I'd left in ruins, their broken bodies a flicker of the fury still burning in me.
The ramp hisses open, heat blasting my face like a furnace's breath, Mustafar's stench a fist in my gut from the sulfur, ash, the burnt reek of molten rock, a scent that hurls me back to a boy's torment, the lava moat a barrier I'd crossed in chains. I stagger down, boots crunching scorched stone, each step a fight against the liquor's sway, the ache in my skull a relentless hammer syncing with the fortress's dark pulse, a rhythm sinking into my bones like a chain I can't snap.
PROXY clanks behind, servos whirring in the heat, a loyal shadow in a world that's taken everything.
Eight figures. They emerge from the haze in a loose arc, cloaked and armored, vibroblades catching the lava glow until they look like they're carrying shards of the planet itself. They move fast, a predator's formation, closing the distance with a discipline. This is intent.
My ground. I bled on this stone before any of them knew this place existed. Vader's dark heart was mine before it was theirs.
The Zabrak reaches me first. A female, horns flaring through a tattered hood, vibro-axes in both hands, the stance of someone who has killed close and knows the taste of it. She plants herself three meters out and the axes come up.
"Step back or yo—"
Her words choke off as my hand snaps up, the Force wrapping her throat like a vise, its power surging with the fortress's dark energy, a beast roaring through me, liquor fog be damned, a storm that burns with clarity no bottle can touch.
She lifts, boots kicking air, axes clattering to stone with a ringing clang as her claws scrape at nothing, a wet rasp gurgling free, her eyes wide with terror I've wielded a hundred times, a fear I've honed into a weapon.
His rasp, somewhere deep from within. "Good. Your anger makes you strong."
The others freeze. Blades half-raised. Eyes sharp under hoods. I feel their fear through the Force, their anger, a scatter of emotions sparking against the fire in me, sparks against a furnace wall. Meaningless.
"You."
The voice shoves through the silence, sharp and guttural, laced with a venom that has been fermenting for a long time. A figure shoulders forward from the pack. Human. Lean and hard, black armor studded with obsidian shards, a vibro-scythe in his grip with notches on the blade that weren't put there by accident. His face is all hatred, every line of it set hard. Eyes locking mine with a fury that cuts through the liquor and lands somewhere behind my sternum. I don't know this man. But he knows me.
"Drop her, Starkiller."
The name comes out of his mouth like a curse.
"Or my oath to Revan won't save you."
The Force flares hotter. The Zabrak's gasps sharpen. Her face darkens another shade. My grip tightens one more degree, the dark current under the fortress feeding it, whispering that I could close my fist and end this before it starts, efficient and final, the way I ended things under Vader's command.
But the name. Revan. The vision's voice. The reason I dragged this wreck of me across seven days of empty black sea.
I open my hand.
She falls, but a blue shimmer catches her, not mine, smoother, easing her down steady, her coughs echoing as she hits her knees, sulfur and fear sharp in the air, my head tilting at the strange power snapping back from her frame.
"Revan's dog?"
I step forward. The sway in my stance turns the taunt almost casual, a drunk picking a fight he can't lose, testing the scythe-bearer's oath like a chain under full weight, no warning. His knuckles whiten on the grip. Good.
"Easy, Zeht!"
A new voice breaks the heat. Cool. Sharp. The kind of voice that has given orders under fire and been obeyed.
"Who the hell are you? Answer fast, or we're done talking."
He steps forward from the formation's flank. Broad shoulders. Armor a surface sleek in a way that matches nothing I've seen in Republic, Imperial, or First Order manufacture. Boots planted wide. Weight centered, balanced on the balls of his feet the way a man stands when he expects the ground to shift. Pistol drawn and leveled at my chest, the barrel steady as if it were bolted to a mount.
His eyes lock mine, green and unflinching, a smirk tugging his lip, a soldier's grit that echoes Juno's resolve, twisting the knife in my chest. I squint, the liquor tilting as my skull pounds, but his words anchor me. Answers, not blood, that's what I clawed here for.
"Talk?"
I step forward despite the sway, the ache a dull hammer stoking the fire in my gut*.*
"Fine."
His smirk holds. He sizes me up like a commander deciding whether a wreck is worth salvaging or scrapping.
"Name's Shepard."
An edge running beneath the even voice, carrying the weight of battles I can feel without the Force telling me, because I know what a man sounds like when he has fought something that should have killed him and somehow didn't.
"Ship stays, droid too. Step inside and we'll sort all this out."
He nods toward PROXY, who has clanked up behind me, optics cycling through scanning patterns as he catalogues the Knights with patience older than half of them. His dented frame catches the lava glow.
"Stay, tin can."
PROXY shuffles. His optics flick from me to the scythe-bearer and back, and the processing cycle spins up behind his vocal emitter, the spin that means he's building something pointed.
"Stay? Last time I saved you from that scythe-swinging lunatic."
The optics land on the armored figure with the obsidian shards and linger there with the droid equivalent of a raised eyebrow.
"He never repaired that helmet, I notice."
The smirk pulls bitter at the corner of my mouth, a sound that might have been a laugh if the last seventeen years hadn't burned the laughter out of me. PROXY clanks back toward the ramp, servos protesting the heat, and the banter settles into the space between us as it always does, thin and sharp and the only thread that still feels like it belongs to the life I used to live.
Shepard leads, steady despite my stagger, his pistol holstered at his hip, floating just a hair off his side. I squint through the haze, Still drunk, or does that thing hover?, the liquor blurring what my eyes swear they see. No saber marks him Jedi or Sith, yet he wields some power beyond the Force. That blue shimmer had caught the Zabrak as she fell, flickering out fast but easing her down, a marvel I can't place, alien to anything the Force ever showed me. It leaves me staring, awe cutting through the fog, a fractured mind grappling with a power I've never known.
The monstrous figure trails close, scythe low but eyes blazing, his pride a live wire between us, a wound I'd dealt in a drunken brawl I can't recall, his oath a leash I'll push 'til it snaps. The halls twist up, narrowing to a chamber I know too well, Vader's quarters, obsidian thick with ghosts and that dark pulse, sinking into my bones like a weight I can't shed, echoing my fractured heartbeat. Here he'd broken me, lashed me 'til I stood, the Force a tool of pain I'd turned to power, my screams ringing as a boy; here he'd choked me as a man, discarded me, "You've outlived your purpose," a betrayal burning hotter than the lava outside. Now, a figure stands in its core, cloaked in black with a mask, red and silver catching the glow like blood on steel, a myth made flesh. Revan, the vision's voice alive, his presence a storm of light and dark.
"Who's in my home?"
The words scrape out before I can stop them, slurred and raw, and my hands find the sabers at my hips before I decide to reach, the reach Vader trained into them and the bottle never took, and white-blue light fills the chamber as I ignite and lunge.
Before I can respond, his hands snap to his hips.
White-blue sabers flare, wild and gripped underhand, and he lunges. His power roaring through the Force, heightened by the nexus beneath us, raw talent and anguish that hits my senses the way a shockwave rolls across a battlefield, indiscriminate and devastating.
I step forward to meet him, violet igniting with a hum that splits the air as our blades clash in a burst that bathes the basalt in light, the chamber's dark current feeding us both at once. His first blade slashes high in a feral arc of defiance, and I parry through Makashi's precision, the violet edge turning his momentum past my shoulder as sparks crack against the walls and ring through the chamber's hollow bones; his second swings low the same breath, fast and reckless, grief pouring through the strike the way a river pours through a broken dam, and I pivot, violet tracing a smooth arc to catch the blow with a hiss that shakes the air, scorched and sharp between us. His strength roars through both blades, unyielding despite the liquor's drag, rage fueling every millimeter of the arc, a warrior shaped by loss, and the Force rings with it, his grief and mine struck on the same note.
I press, violet whirling tight to lock his first blade at the crossguard, then twist until it tears from his grip and clatters across the stone, its white-blue glow guttering as it rolls to rest against the far wall. His second surges up in desperation, a flare aimed at my mask, and I sidestep, seize his wrist, and halt the blade inches from the silver-gray surface, its heat a breath against the metal, the tension between his grief and my resolve screwed tighter until the air between us goes taut. Five moves, a single breath held, and the chamber stills. His storm breaking against my calm the way a wave breaks against a seawall and learns the seawall was built to outlast it.
"Focus."
The Force threads a subtle lift into the word, not a strike but a tether, an anchor thrown to a man drowning in his own fury, steadied by the chamber's current.
"Or you are lost to it."
His eyes flicker. The blur sharpens for a moment, rage cooling into something more raw, more exposed, the face of a man realizing he had attacked a stranger in a room where he had once been the one attacked. He staggers back, chest heaving, the remaining white-blue saber clutched in a grip that trembles, its glow dimming as exhaustion bleeds through the adrenaline. My violet blade retracts, its glow fading into the stone's rhythm. The Force had shown me his fire. Undirected, it consumes itself.
He stands straight, a wreck with power I recognize, light and dark warring beneath the surface, compounded by loss, a focus cutting through the stupor that tells me the man underneath the grief is formidable. Shepard lingers at the threshold, green eyes steady, arms crossed, a soldier unshaken by what he has just witnessed, his presence the grounding counterweight it has been since we met. Zeht stands beside him, horns glinting under her hood, a guardian poised to move if I give the word. Vicrul looms nearby, scythe low, eyes burning at the man who now shakes before me.
"I am Revan, and I am this fortress' Master."
I step closer, the mask shifting toward him to weigh, not break, the Force whispering his potential in currents that run deeper than his pain.
His gaze narrows, the liquor's in his eyes, but his voice steadies, rough as shattered duracrete, pain threading the Force between us.
"Pulled me through the bottle to end up back here. This place... the vision… a shattered moon."
His words falter, unguarded, the fortress a wound reopened, explaining the fury that drove him, a vulnerability piercing the stupor.
"Yes, Yavin 8 is no more."
I trace the moment that had shaken the galaxy's foundations.
"It stirred when I awoke. It stirred when Shepard arrived. And since its arrival, the galaxy falls silent."
I pause, the memory of the gas giant's moon's destruction flashing through me, torn apart, a mass of wrongness split into two.
I face Shepard, his silhouette steady in the threshold. He shifts, arms crossed, green eyes cutting through the chamber.
"Not even a hello, and now we're all left with just a bad feeling that won't go away."
Zeht's gaze flicks to him, horns catching the light, acknowledging the weight in his words.
Galen's brow creases, the fog parting as he attempts to keep straight, his presence a storm gathering with each breath.
"Every attempt to drown what I am, what has happened, ends the same way."
His eyes drift as if chasing the vision's edge, saber trembling in his grip, its twin cold on the floor across the chamber, both now idle.
I step closer, mask casting a faint glow across his face.
"A fracture."
The weight of the Jedi Civil War threads the word, the crucible that had taught me what the Force truly was and what it truly cost.
"Beyond this fortress, beyond the stars. A tear in the Force is growing. It is a disturbance I sense even now, and the Force guides you here."
Galen slumps, his frame sagging under the weight of liquor and loss. Then, with a sharp twist of his wrist, the blade retracts with a hiss as the hilt whips back to his belt in a single practiced motion, instinct cutting through the drunken fog as muscle memory always does, the body remembering what the mind tries to forget.
An immense screech invades my mind, voiceless, amplified through the dark well beneath us until it rakes at my core with icy claws, redirecting every bit of my awareness to it.
Galen's eyes flare wide, dread slicing through as he lurches upright, breath catching. Shepard jolts beside the threshold, a sharp hiss escaping through his teeth as the wave hits. His hands flex, biotics flaring blue for a half-second, unease creasing his brow in lines. Zeht stiffens, horns tilting as a low growl rumbles from her throat, eyes flicking to me with fierce readiness. Vicrul shifts, scythe dipping as the screech grazes his own rough-hewn Force sense, his lips curling, a flicker of surprise in his predator's stare.
It then quakes again but amplified. A dead weight pressing against the equilibrium I had forged, its weight deepening with the nexus beneath. Galen's frame shakes, a ragged gasp breaking free, his pain a live thread twisting in the currents. Shepard's stance hardens, dread etching lines across his face, a soldier braced for a fight he cannot see and cannot scan and cannot plan for. Vicrul's eyes narrow, a snarl tugging his mouth, the Force stirring in him.
I stand still, resolve a steel core within me, the balance holding. The screech pulses one last time, its grip coiling around us, fates bound by an invisible thread, its silence a coiled promise of chaos yet to break.